The Hebraic Tongue Restored

About a third of words in Biblical Hebrew, so it’s said, are technically incomprehensible. They either only occur once or else are used in various senses with unique meanings multiple times, or are otherwise obscure in sundry ways. Biblical Hebrew is a compressed language. It has a relatively small vocabulary that is pressed into highly complex and subtle uses. This is all compounded by the fact that it lacks vowels – as a written language it is a language of consonants with pronunciations and distinctions between root words coming later by convention. It is inherently arcane.

* * * 

It is unknown when Jews first arrived on the Malabar Coast. A notice in the Paradiso synagogue in Jew Town, Cochin, says that it was in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple, 72AD. Other traditions say that there were already Jewish traders there at that time. 

The present author was pondering these facts recently while sitting in the Paradiso Synagogue in Jew Town, Mattancherry, the only surviving functional synagogue in Cochin on the Malabar Coast. Once there was a large Jewish community supporting seven or so synagogues in this region. Most of the community has now migrated to Israel. The Paradiso Synagogue, dating back to the early 1600s, remains and is open to the public at selected times every day except the Sabbath. This writer had just had a pleasant conversation with Mrs. Sarah Cohen, aged 93, an embroiderer with a shop directly up from the Synagogue. She related that there is now barely a quorum and that, in all likelihood, when her generation is gone the synagogue will cease to conduct services. Like other Synagogues in the region it will then be classified merely as “heritage” and in the care of organizations based in Israel. It will be a pity, but probably unavoidable. Jew Town is now largely a tourist affair anyway. It is well-preserved and still retains its historic character, and it is frequented by Israeli tourists, but it is not really a Jew Town anymore.

In any case, the present writer was admiring the Synagogue, observing the strict silence and pious atmosphere of the place  as tourists came and went, when he realized that he had little trouble reading some of the Hebrew on the notices on the walls. He could read them quite naturally. This came as something of a surprise because, in truth, it must be over twenty years since he applied himself to any serious study of Biblical Hebrew. He once received some intensive study in the language from an Irish Catholic priest and thereafter dabbled in it – qabbalistically - on and off for several years without ever gaining anything like a decent proficiency. It is surprising how much of it has stuck. Even through years of teaching Biblical Studies – at an undergraduate introductory level – he had little call to use Hebrew to any great degree, other than a few words here and there. Yet, when confronted with a slab of Hebrew text, he can read the letters and recognizes much of the vocabulary, even if the grammar is gone. His every attempt to learn other exotic languages has born little fruit over the years yet, for some reason, he has managed to retain a good amount of Biblical Hebrew. 

In part, this must be because he once owned a copy of and immersed himself in the wonderfully seminal work of the French poet Febre d’Olivet, The Hebraic Tongue Restored. It was once among his very favourite books. He bought a copy in a facsimile edition in the days when he was working in the second-hand book trade. Where this copy is now is a mystery. Like other once favourite books it is long gone. But he remembers it with great fondness. It is one of those priceless tomes, a formative work, strange, eccentric, charming, arcane, instructive, suggestive, impressive. Published by Monsieur d’Olivet in 1767, it is a work that proposes that the Hebrew tongue has great mystic powers and occult significances. It elevates the language of the Bible to a special status. D’ Olivet was writing in the era prior to the Rosetta Stone and the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Among the central claims of his book is the claim that Hebrew contains the lost secrets of the priests of ancient Egypt. As such, it had a profound impact upon the French occult revival and its other European offshoots in the nineteenth century. It championed the notion that the “Hebraic Tongue” is an esoteric language of extraordinary cosmic, occult and metaphysical power. The book purports to investigate the very roots of the language. 

One of the luminaries who joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London at the end of the nineteenth century once complained that he was promised to be shown the secrets of the universe, and upon this promise swore an oath to the death at his initiation, only to be given a copy of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Such an inflated, cosmic, account of Hebrew in European occult circles goes directly back to The Hebraic Tongue Restored. 

Of course, Monsieur d’Olivet was wrong about the Egyptian hieroglyphs, but aside from that his study of Hebrew and exposition of the roots of the Hebrew language was groundbreaking, insightful and competent. It remains an etymological and linguistic goldmine. And who is to say that his depiction of Biblical Hebrew as a language of extraordinary esoteric depth is mistaken? Its compression and compact vocabulary certainly render it mysterious and potent, and for Jews, as for Christians – and Mahometans too – it is, after all, a tongue in which God Himself chose to speak. By this perspective, every letter necessarily has infinite depth. It is a sacred tongue. It is not the tongue of the ancient Egyptians, but sacred nevertheless. It is a language compressed under the weight of the Divine Word. 

The highlights of the Hebraic Tongue Restored are the lexicon of Hebrew roots, and then – based on that – d’Olivet’s remarkable translation and exposition of the first section of the Book of Genesis, the cosmology of Moses. This is a tour de force in the application of the root ideas exposed in the lexicon and truly one of the most profound expositions of Genesis ever undertaken by either Jew or Gentile. In his younger years the present writer spent night after night delving into the mysteries revealed by Monsieur d’Olivet, and it is probably because these mysteries were so arresting and so compelling – so metaphysically fundamental – that they made a lasting impression upon him. Hebrew speaks to the heart. It is like no other language. The Koran boasts that its Arabic is easy to remember, but for the present writer the claim is even truer of the Bible's Hebrew. Terse, concentrated, potent with meaning, it seems a language just made to carry significances that extend beyond time and space. No study of the language makes this clearer than d'Olivet's Hebraic Tongue Restored. 

In the normal course of events, the present author is an avowed enthusiast and apologist for the inspired status of the Septuagint; in matters Biblical he is most at home with the Greek. But his recent visit to the old Synagogue in Jew Town in Cochin took him back to earlier interests and younger days when he engaged with and was fascinated by the cryptic powers of the Hebrew. The Hebraic Tongue Restored is still available in facsimile edition, and these days in PDF form. Anyone with any interest in Biblical Hebrew – and especially its deeper, qabbalistic dimensions – should acquire a copy. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Lament of the Prophet called God

“Jesus wept.” The shortest sentence in the English Bible. Jesus wept on the Cross. In the fascinating reconstructions of the pseudepigraphal medieval work, the Gospel of Barnabas, however, Jesus is portrayed as weeping in many circumstances; indeed, he is a man of constant sorrow. He weeps for Jerusalem, he weeps for Israel and, in a pivotal episode in chapter 112, he weeps for himself. The effect of the written text is melodramatic rather than tragic, but its author intends to portray Jesus as a tragic prophet, an innocent man entangled in wicked events. 

This is despite the fact that in this gospel it is the traitor Judas Iscariot and not Jesus who is crucified; its central claim is that Jesus escaped the Cross. In other docetic literature this is seen as an occasion for happiness: Jesus is portrayed as looking on at the crucifixion happy and smiling, even laughing. In the medieval Barnabas, however, Jesus regards even his rescue from the ignominy of the Cross as a cause for weeping. Only once, in all 222 chapters, is he portrayed as being pleased. In chapter 127, after the great success of the missions to Judea undertaken by his disciples, he expresses contentment and is able, with his disciples, to rest. Otherwise, he is uniformly dour and tearful, a prophet carrying the immense burden of his prophecies.

The Angel Gabriel comforts him on several occasions but to little effect. The Jewish authorities appeal to the Roman Senate to put an end to dissension about the identity of Jesus: this does not comfort him either. He is still a tragic figure even though Judas dies in his stead and God is revealed as merciful toward the righteous and severe to the unfaithful. The docetic crucifixion does not ease Jesus' discomfiture at all.

The source of this portrait of the suffering (docetic) Jesus is to be found in almost the very centre of the work, chapter 112. Here Jesus confides to Barnabas - "he who writes" as the author describes himself - the cause of his sorrow. The few commentators who have studied the work do not seem to have noted this or to have given it due weight. Alone with "he who writes" Jesus reveals what he calls his "great secrets". In the context of the work as a whole it is an important moment; matters that have only been hinted at earlier are here spelt out in full. It is a key scene. All the scenes in which "he who writes" takes a part are important and signal key themes, but this scene especially so. It is Jesus' most intimate, personal confession to his closest disciple and, arguably, a signature scene revealing to us matters close to the heart of the work's unknown author - assuming that the author identifies himself with the character "he who writes".

More significantly, it is the moment at which this "he who writes" receives his commission to impart Jesus' true teachings to the world - which amounts to authority for the document itself. Jesus is half way through his ministry. He knows what lies ahead. After the disciples and apostles had departed:

There remained with Jesus he who writes; whereupon Jesus, weeping, said: "O Barnabas, it is necessary that I should reveal to you great secrets, which, after that I shall be departed from the world, you shall reveal to it."

Then answered he that writes, weeping, and said: "Suffer me to weep, O master, and other men also, for that we are sinners. And you, that are an holy one and prophet of God, it is not fitting for you to weep so much."

Jesus answered: "Believe me, Barnabas;, that I cannot weep as much as I ought. For if men had not called me God, I should have seen God here as he will be seen in paradise, and should have been safe not to fear the day of judgment. But God knows that I am innocent, because never have I harbored thought to be held more than a poor slave. No, I tell you that if I had not been called God I should have been carried into paradise when I shall depart from the world, whereas now I shall not go thither until the judgment. Now you see if I have cause to weep. Know, O Barnabas, that for this I must have great persecution, and shall be sold by one of my disciples for thirty pieces of money. Whereupon I am sure that he who shall sell me shall be slain in my name, for that God shall take me up from the earth, and shall change the appearance of the traitor so that every one shall believe him to be me; nevertheless, when he dies an evil death, I shall abide in that dishonour for a long time in the world. But when Muhammad shall come, the sacred Messenger of God, that infamy shall be taken away. And this shall God do because I have confessed the truth of the Messiah who shall give me this reward, that I shall be known to be alive and to be a stranger to that death of infamy."

Then answered he that writes: "O master, tell me who is that wretch, for I fain would choke him to death."

"Hold your peace," answered Jesus, "for so God wills, and he cannot do otherwise but see you that when my mother is afflicted at such an event you tell her the truth, in order that she may be comforted."

Then answered he who writes: "All this will I do, O master, if God please."

The first contribution by "he who writes" in this passage is interesting in that it might be taken to reflect a more normative type of doceticism. Jesus is indeed a holy one of God: he should therefore not suffer. This is the basis for the doceticism we know from among the heresies in early Christianity: Jesus is too good to have died by crucifixion. In the docetic mind it is too much to think that God could permit or endorse such a monstrous injustice. It was a powerful objection to Christianity in its early history. What manner of God would allow His Son to suffer the scandal and torture of being crucified? Here "he who writes" believes that it is improper for one so holy as Jesus to weep so much. Weeping is the state of sinners; Jesus is not a sinner; why then should he weep?

The "great secrets" then, are a response to this. Jesus explains why he weeps, why he suffers, even though he is holy. And his answer is in itself extraordinary. Its theological and Christological implications are far-reaching. His answer is - I suffer because I am too holy. This is an idea that finds a place within orthodox Christian themes. It answers docetic formulations with the psychological truism: if God was a man a hateful world would despise Him. This is not a failing of God's justice but rather the way of a fallen world and of a sinful mankind.

Elsewhere in the Gospel of Barnabas we have reproductions of the canonical theme 'the persecution of the prophets'. Prophets, in this work, are persecuted by the world, and this is in the nature of things. The author usually has Ahab and Jezebel’s persecution of Elijah and the "Sons of the Prophet's" in mind, but it is presented as a general principle: prophets suffer persecution. Jesus' own sense of persecution, however, is unique. It happens, in this gospel, that Jesus is so holy that men mistakenly call him God, and in so doing bring upon him the persecution of deification. This is the greatest of the "great secrets" in the Gospel of Barnabas: Jesus weeps because men call him God and - more than that - the deification of him does him violence. The peculiar persecution of Jesus, that is, is that he is so good, possesses so many miraculous powers, displays so many signs, that men worship him and make of him a false god. This tragic irony is the keynote to the Gospel of Barnabas' picture of the weeping Jesus.

The consequences of this are wide and are explored throughout this work. While God knows full well that Jesus is an innocent man, the fact that men have made of him a false god has unavoidable repercussions. Jesus, it seems, was a prophet of such high station that he could have attained the paradisiacal vision in his lifetime. Instead, because men had called him God, and despite his innocence, he must, tragically, be deprived this supreme vision until the end of time.

While Jesus is no less deserving of this supreme vision, the fact that men have made of him a god in some way links him to their fate: he must wait until the Judgment and until those who have deified him have received their proper reward. There is the suggestion, too, perhaps, that as a Prophet Jesus was indeed god-like, and that deification was a hazard inherent in his mission. When Peter, at one point, says that Jesus is God, Jesus curses him and prays that he be sent to hell for saying and believing so. At another point Jesus bangs his head on the ground in anger and frustration at what people believe and say of him. He spends a good part of his ministry trying to dispel the false claims being made about who and what he is. In what is surely a strange and oblique presentation of the Jewish War, the identity of Jesus causes sedition and upheaval in Judea. 

In one sense, in the Gospel of Barnabas, his identity is his mission and his message; what he teaches is not as challenging as the question of who he is. Because men call him God, he is withheld from God, or, more exactly, men who are withheld from God withhold him. He is not free of them until they receive their justice. Although it is not explicit in this passage, this doctrine conforms to what the Muslim inspired Gospel of Barnabas has to say about idols and idolatry. In effect, people treat Jesus as an idol, an object of shiirk. He suffers because of this.

The present author has reframed Jesus' speech in chapter 112 as a lament, the lament of the prophet called God:

If men had not called me God

I would have seen God here as in paradise.

If men had not called me God
I should have been safe not to fear the Day of Judgment.

God knows that in my heart I am innocent.

I am naught but His poor slave.

Now thou seest if I have cause to weep.

If men had not called me God

I should have been transported to the Gardens of Bliss

when I depart from this world.

Now I shall not know paradise until the Last Day.

Great is my persecution! since men have called me God.

Now thou seest if I have cause to weep.

God knows that I am innocent of heart.

He shall take me up from the earth

and have the traitor slain in my name.

But if men had not called me God

God should not give him my face

and my likeness in an evil death.

Now thou seest if I have cause to weep.

If men had not called me God

I should not have to abide in dishonour

and await the Comforter who shall remove the infamy.

I have confessed the truth of the one who is to come.

Only he shall restore my name.

Only then shall I be known to be alive

and a stranger to that evil death.
Men have made of me an idol.

This is surely the greatest persecution
the Prophets of God can know.

Now thou seest if I have cause to weep.

It is a cunning twist of Mahometan Christology. The important point to note is that Jesus' final solace - the vision of Paradise - is postponed because men called him God. In this perspective – the core message of this heterodox medieval work - to call Jesus God does him lasting spiritual violence. In the medieval Barnabas he is spared the injustice of the Cross – although Judas is given his appearance and so the world at large attributes this vile fate to him, a slander that persists until the ‘Comforter’ (Paraclete) comes to expose the error – but the unique form of persecution he suffers among all the persecuted prophets is to be deified by a wickedly idolatrous world.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

On Thomas McElwain

Dr. Thomas McElwain rarely contributes to religious debate these days, since he feels – with much justification – that we live in contentious times and public engagement merely invites rancor and hatred. It is a great pity, though, because he offers a unique voice and a fresh, unusual perspective. The present writer is drawn to Dr. McElwain’s work on several counts, but largely because he is a living embodiment of the overlap between certain strains of Protestant Christianity and the Mahometan faith. In previous posts (see here) this author has outlined his conviction that the Protestant Reformation was a type of Christian response, or realignment, to the pressing fact of Islam, most specifically – in historic terms – to the pressure of Turkish Islam upon central Europe in the 1500s. But the links between Protestantism and Mahometanism go deeper than historic mechanisms. They extend into early Christianity and, in principle, to the roots of the entire Abrahamic religious complex. This is the view, and even more the experience, of Dr. McElwain, who has devoted most of his adult life to the exploration and explication of exactly such roots.

On the surface he is an odd mix. He was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist in the southern states of the USA, with strong, unavoidable exposure to the Baptist tradition. Through both his grandparents, maternal and paternal, however, he was familiar with a stream of Unitarian Quakerism which, remarkably, was linked to the Alevi Soofi tradition of Asia Minor. His grandfathers wore turbans and revered the Twelve Imams of the Shia. Add to this a deep backwoods acquaintance with certain tribes of American Indians, their languages and their traditions, and the fact that he has lived for years in a remote snow-bound cottage in Finland converting Biblical and Koranic texts into rhymed verse and we can surely, in all fairness, state that Dr. Elwain has trod an unconventional road. He describes himself thus: “I’m sort of a Quaker hard-shell Baptist Sufi who has practiced Islam.” By his own account he is a follower of a certain Mr. Edward Elwall, who he counts as his intellectual mentor, a turban-clad English Unitarian Quaker who lived in the early 1700s and who belonged to a Turkish order of dervishes. Dr. McElwain is, in short, a southern American scholar in far north Scandanavia, a Biblical Christian with Shia Islamic Turko-Soofi affiliations.

This all makes him a fascinating character. Many would say eccentric – but that designation would allow his work and viewpoint to be too easily dismissed since it implies outlandish. In fact, Dr. McElwain is a thorough and very learned scholar whose teachings are founded in a deep study of languages, and at their centre is a simple but profound notion. He regards the Decalogue – the Mosaic Ten Commandments – to be the core of the Abrahamic tradition, and he reads all three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, through that singular lens. Not, however, by the usual legalistic and moral reading, but rather by an esoteric reading that emphasizes the fact that the Decalogue is the single-most direct revelation given by the Almighty in any of the vast literature of these three great traditions. Direct, that is, meaning unmediated by angels or other representatives. The Koran, for instance, is mediated by the Angel Jibreel. The Gospels come to us through the authority of the Apostles. But the Decalogue, the revelation of Sinai, is a direct and forthright encounter with the Divine where God speaks and reveals His law without mediation (except the Burning Bush.)

This scriptural fact, Dr. Elwain has argued throughout his career, has been lost in the messy overgrowth of religious tradition. He has devoted his studies to reasserting the centrality of the Decalogue both within the Abrahamic traditions and, importantly, between them. The Mahometan tradition, for instance, has, he argues, lost sight of the fact that it is Moses – the Prophet Moosa – who is the central character in the Koran, and that at every turn the Koran reiterates the Decalogue as the essence of Allah’s will. The present author – let it be admitted – has had the experience, years ago now, of scoffing at this assertion, only to be shaken out of his complacency when he checked and rechecked Koranic texts according to the McElwain reading and discovering that the good Doctor is absolutely correct. Thomas McElwain is a very astute and careful reader of both Bible and Koran – and pseudepigrapha as well – and his reading and cross-reading of those texts is always perspicacious and penetrating.

For reasons best known to himself, he has chosen to present much of his work in the form of rhyming verse; it is an idiosyncrasy, certainly, and yet, perhaps, it preserves his thought from the straight-jacket of academic stultifications. This can only be applauded.

Unfortunately, he occupies that terrible no-man’s-land between the warring ideologies of the Christians and the Saracens. As he himself relates, his work on the Koran alienates his Christian friends and his work on the Bible alienates his Muslim friends. We live, as he says, in an age of renewed polarization. Indeed, this new atmosphere of mutual conflict has, over just the last few years, infected the once ‘moderate’ and Europe-looking world of Turkish Islam and the plight of the Alevi Mahometans in Turkish society has worsened considerably in recent times as Shia/Sooni sectarianism once again rips open the Muslim Ummah. Dr. McElwain’s work of eucemenical cross-fertilization, that is, – always in the left-field - is even less welcome in the public sphere than in the past.

Readers will find his name prominent in a vicious on-line attack upon the Dawoodiyya Soofi Order, – that Order being a beautiful inspiration, structured around the McElwain vision, celebrating the Psalms of David in the (Turkish) Soofi mode. Certain figures have seen fit to throw as much mud at the Doctor as they can. It is not surprising that he has withdrawn from this environment of hostility. There is only a certain amount of misunderstanding, abuse and derision a soft-spoken, sincere and warm-hearted scholar can take.

Another point in favor of Dr. McElwain, from this present author’s point of view, is his insistence that the medieval Gospel of Barnabas – one of the strangest works of Christian apochrypha – is, when removed from the context of Christian/Mahometan polemic, a work of spiritual power. This author has been a student of the said ‘Muslim Gospel’ for several decades. Much of his academic work has concerned a careful investigation into its origins and provenance, as well as inter-textual studies of its relation to New Testament and other gospels. Beyond that, however, it is – though it is rarely acknowledged as such – a work of great spiritual merit. Its merit lies in its extraordinary synthesis of all three Abrahamic perspectives. In practice, it manages to offend Jews, Christians and Mahometans, but there is a higher viewpoint that goes beyond such narrow confessional particularisms and in which this fact becomes a shining virtue.

In contemporary academic circles, it seems only Dr McElwain (along with the present author) recognize this. Regardless of how the Gospel of Barnabas came into being – and the present author is firmly of the view that its roots and some sections of the extant text are of considerable antiquity – it offers a Judeo-Christian-Islamo synthesis that is both unique and profound. Whoever composed the Gospel of Barnabas, they transcended the limitations of age-old religious divisions and attained a higher synthetic viewpoint. Dr. McElwain has devoted his career to doing much the same. The author counts him, for this reason and others, as something of a kindred spirit.

Dr. McElwain's rhymed verse renderings and commentary on Biblical and Koranic texts can be found under the title 'Beloved and I'. His most academic work can be found in the volume entitled 'Islam in the Bible'.

The present author’s work on the Gospel of Barnabas can be found here.


Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Discussions on the Jesus Myth Theory

BEING DISCUSSIONS ON THE THEORY THAT 

THE FIGURE OF JESUS IS NOT HISTORICAL BUT MYTHIC

Question: Why have you been involved in historical studies of early Christianity?

Answer: I lectured in Biblical Studies. It was in a secular university. But I was fortunate, because it was part of a broader Religious Studies program. So I could place those Biblical studies - historical, as you say, in a broader discussion. I could place them beside, contrast them to, religious perspectives. 

Question: You appeared in a video clip, which is on Youtube, with many thousands of views, in which you support the theory that Jesus was just a myth…

Answer: Years ago. Yes. It was a favor to a friend, to appear in his video and talk about it. It is an old clip now.

Question: But is it still your view? Or has your view changed?

Answer: It hasn’t changed, but at the same time that video only offers a fragment, a cross section, of my views on what is a complex issue. Like all snapshots it misrepresents. I try to offer nuanced views on that video, but it does not really come across.

Question: But you still support the theory that Jesus was a myth?

Answer: Considered as an historical question, I tend to take that view. Or rather, you might say I am firmly of that view. But there is much more to be said about it. We shouldn’t say that Jesus was “just” a myth. There is no “just” about it. But – to put it negatively – I doubt that Jesus of Nazareth was an historical figure. So the stories about him are essentially myths. It is a theory that has gained some traction in recent years - although not much in academia - and I happen to think - independently - that it best answers the evidence. But I could be wrong.

Question: So, you think there might have been an historical Jesus. Is that what you’re saying?

Answer: I’m saying that the polarity myth/history is a problem in itself. That is what I would like to be saying. Especially when dealing with religion. And certain religions in particular. As a historical matter, I think there might have been an historical Jesus, but I doubt it, and I don’t think there needs to have been in order to explain the historical record. Clearly, what we have in the record is a case of a myth being made into history. Not the other way around. Even if, somewhere, there was an historical germ: it was still largely a myth that was made into history. Not the other way around.

Question: Which is how it has usually been understood, yes?

Answer: Yes. It has always been assumed that there was an historical Jesus. And that over the course of time this historical kernel was amplified by mythology. This is an especially Protestant construction. There was the historical Jesus, but then the Church embroidered the whole thing with theology and myths. So the assumption has been that if we strip away the myths we will arrive at an authentic historical Jesus. It is a deeply Protestant project. But I think it is mistaken in its most basic assumption, its premise. Namely, there was an historical Jesus to start with.

Question: But Catholic historians share that assumption, don’t they?

Answer: They do. Of course. Because – and this is what makes it complex – it is not just a matter of history with which we are concerned here. It is a matter of dogma. The historicity of Christ is a dogma. And it is shared by all Christians, Catholic, Protestant, otherwise. It is a matter of the creeds. God became an historical man. Christianity is about a divine intervention into history. So – in any normative sense – Christians cannot think otherwise. It is a problem.

Question: What makes it a problem?

Answer: The problem is that historical research – godless, secular research – points to the conclusion that Christ was not a historical figure. Or he need not have been, anyway.

Question: Which is a controversial conclusion, isn’t it?

Answer: It is. Among Biblical scholars, it is definitely a minority view. It is regarded as a radical position. And widely rejected. In general, though, it is a controversial view because the historicity of Christ is a Christian dogma. And because even non-Christians share it as an assumption. It is only recently that a body of scholars and researchers, professional and amateur, have raised the serious possibility that Christ may not have been an historical figure. It is a shocking conclusion. It undermines the whole basis of Christianity – or at least, Christianity as an historical religion. For some people, though, that is a positive outcome. It is a theory promoted in anti-Christian circles. Anti-christian polemic. I am not attracted to it, as a theory, for any such reason. On the contrary.

Question: What do you mean?

Answer: I mean, I am not a vexatious researcher. Not an activist academic on an anti-religious crusade. I have only looked at it from a purely historical point of view. Other people – other proponents of the mythicist position – are atheists, or anti-Christian liberals. They have issues with Christianity. They set out to damage Christianity. I am not interested in that at all. I’m not an atheist and I’m not anti-Christian. But I do happen to conclude that, on the evidence, it is most likely that the figure of Jesus of Nazareth is mythic rather than historical. I might be wrong about that, but on the evidence I think it is the case.

Question: But other scholars – or most scholars – would say that the evidence confirms an historical Jesus, yes?

Answer: Yes. I think – it is arguable – that the evidence is best explained by assuming that the figure of Jesus is essentially mythic. Although, you know, finally I have to say I am agnostic about it, and I think everyone should be. Because we are discussing a local event 2000+ years ago in what was effectively a war zone. So what can we know for sure? I read the evidence one way. But it is, by the nature of things, impossible to be sure. That will always be the case. So we should always be prepared to change our views. I have a firm view, but I’m always prepared to change my views, because I could be wrong. Although dogma - Christian dogma - complicates even that. Christian dogma, Christian metaphysics, depends upon the Incarnation. It's a Christological issue. 

Question: Did your study of the problem of the historical Jesus fit comfortably with your other work and studies?

Answer: Not always. In Biblical Studies I determined to study the most extremely opposing possible positions. Ultra-traditional and ultra-radical. Personally, I saw it as a type of mental yoga. Stretching. On the other hand, my doctoral thesis concerned Plato's story of Atlantis. In that context I was always engaged with problems of myth and history, muthos and logos. It is an exactly related problem. I adopt Plato's rationalism, but also his play. Is Christianity the Noble Lie? I say that as a genuine question, from a Platonic platform, not as a swipe at Christianity.

Question: Not being anti-Christian. Is that one of the ways your views have changed?

Answer: No. No. I’ve never been anti-Christian. Although I have been, and still am, anti historical religion. I don’t subscribe to historical religion, in general. But that doesn’t mean I am anti-Christian, as such, except in as much as Christianity has a strong emphasis on historicity. But I do not have an anti-Christian agenda, whereas many people who propose the Jesus-as-myth theory do. They have a grievance with Christianity – usually in an American context – and they see the Jesus-as-myth theory as a way of damaging Christianity. I have never been party to that. Although, you know, we live in an era of deconstruction. We're not building anything. We are taking things apart. In my case, it is reluctant. 

Question: But your support for a Jesus-as-myth interpretation helps that causes, doesn’t it?

Answer: It does. Which is unfortunate. I regret that. I regret that holding that position – a historical position – gives succor to atheists and God-haters. The Jesus-as-myth community of scholars and researchers is populated by such people. Largely, I don’t have anything to do with them. I am intolerant of atheists. I’m not an atheist, and I think it is lame to conclude from an historical argument about Jesus of Nazareth that there is no God. That is another issue. As it happens, on the evidence, I think the Jesus story is essentially mythic. It is unfortunate that this grates against normative Christianity, and I regret the fact that it might undermine the faith of some people. Because, for some people, some Christians, their faith is built on an historical Jesus. I regret that my views on that topic might erode their faith, which I take to be sincere and honest. I respect religious faith. I have much less respect for skeptics and skepticism and especially activist atheism.

Question: You regret the impact of the theory, but you still subscribe to it?

Answer: As an historical problem, yes. I studied this problem for fifteen or more years, but it was in a secular context. I taught Biblical Studies in a secular context. I always respected the fact it was a secular context. And I saw it as part of my duty to learn the secular sciences, secular history. It was never my job to preach apologetics. I studied the historical problem, Was there a Jesus of Nazareth? I concluded that the figure we meet in the New Testament is most likely a mythical character and not historical. That is my honest estimation of the evidence.

Question: What evidence?

Answer: There is not much of it. There is a finite amount of textual and archeological evidence. You look over the evidence and then come to your conclusion. My conclusion is that the Jesus story was originally mythological, but it has been fixed to a history, made historical. That is a much better explanation of the facts than having it the other way around, namely that it was a history that became mythicized. It is one or the other. I cannot escape the conclusion that it was first myth and was then historicized.

Question: By whom? And why?

Answer: The short answer to that question must be – by the Romans. Why is a more complex question, but in part it must have been a deliberate creation – an outcome, in part, of Roman propaganda wars with Jewish rebels in the Jewish wars. This claim needs to be carefully argued, of course, but I think it is basically correct. In any case, it means that Christianity was – from the outset – inextricably Roman. I am led, in this regard, to very Catholic positions, in some ways.

Question: How? What do you mean?

Answer: The Protestant position is that Jesus the Galilean – his religion, his cult – was taken over by the Romans. You had a Judean/Galilean history and then it was hijacked by the Romans and thus the Roman Church. That is the Protestant position. My view is that Christianity was Roman from its inception. The Church was first. And first it was guardian of a mythology, and then this mythology was made into a history. It was made to fit into a history. By Romans. The Church is really a continuation of certain aspects of the Roman civil service – but that’s another matter. I don’t care to argue the details of it here.

Question: No? Why not?

Answer: Because we are discussing its implications, not the theory itself. Of course, it is a theory and only a theory. It might be wrong. I’m reasonably confident it is right. It is the best explanation of the evidence. It is historically cogent. But this is a very problematic fact for Christians, of course, because it is impossible for Christians to accept a merely mythic Jesus. There is the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is a dogma. It is theologically indispensable. Christians will rightly resist the theory with everything they have. They must. Although it is perhaps not as difficult for Catholics – and Orthodox – as for Protestants. Those whose faith is based in history, in the idea that Christianity is historical, will have greatest trouble accommodating such a theory.

Question: But I don’t see how Christianity could be the outcome of ‘Roman propaganda’ as you put it.

Answer: I don’t put it exactly like that. No. Christianity is the product of a mighty battle, a collision of civilizations, the acute focus of which were the Jewish Wars. These were terrible, epoch-making events. It was not a casual exercise by some Roman propagandist. I am not suggesting that. But the New Testament is Roman literature, all the same. And the image of Jesus as the peaceful Jew – the antithesis of the Jewish militant – is a Roman construction. It is all based around historical events, of course. Especially the destruction of the Temple. And there may be a germ of history in the person of Jesus. But the core is the Logos doctrine. It is largely taken from Philo Judaeus. And then in the gospels it becomes history. Especially the Gospel of Luke. You can see how it is historicized. It was myth first, history later. 

Question: A clash of civilisations?

Answer: Yes. We ned to expand the context, our view of the context. Think of the Trojan War. Europe clashes with Asia. And think of how that conflict created a type of cultural overflow in myth and literature. Think of its place in Western civilization. The inception of Christianity is the same. Second Temple Judaism. It is an historical watershed. It gives birth to Christianity. Somehow. It is a mysterious process. It gives birth to Christian sanctity. It is the same clash, really. Europe clashes with Asia. We can say what we like about the grubby facts of history but somehow, out of those ancient events, Christian sanctity was born. I believe in Christian sanctity. Christianity is a sacred religion. Christian sanctity is a reality. It is mysterious how such a sacred thing can be born from the sordid processes of human history. I might hold certain views about history, but I am still mystified.

Question: Surely the Romans were anti-Christian?

Yes. And there is a very obvious and dramatic way in which Christianity is anti-Roman. I am very aware of it. The Crucifixion. Surely the lesson of the crucifixion is that Roman power is impotent. You can take a man and torture him and crucify him, but Christ has a moral victory over Roman brutality. That is the great lesson of the Crucifixion. In an obvious way, this is anti-Roman. It undermines Roman power. Doesn’t it? So I admit that aspects of Christianity are certainly anti-Roman, deeply anti-Roman, and no doubt the Roman establishment was anti-Christian, up to a point. So it is a complex matter. I have ideas on it, that I have formed over years, but I won’t elaborate on it all now. I want to explore the question of what Christianity does if it settles on the fact that Christ was not a historical figure. Is that possible? Is it something that can even be thought? 

Question: So you also reject the reality of the miracles described in the Gospels?

Answer: They are a good example of how to read the Christian writings in context. The context is Second Temple Judaism. When Jesus "heals" people in the Gospels, what it is about is making such people ritually clean for the Temple. He "heals" Jewish exclusivism. The lame. The lepers. The defiled. He heals them. This is a metaphor for making them whole under the Law and suitable for the Temple. But in the Gospels these are presented as quasi-historical events. It's an extended metaphor - healing - but it is presented as quasi-historical events. I don't take them literally. It is a metaphor, and one of which the Romans would approve since Jesus breaks down Jewish exclusivity. I like the way these matters offer an arena in which to discuss important things. One cannot help but be a cultural Christian in some ways. 

Question: And the Resurrection?

The best way to look at early Christianity is as a continuation of pre-Christian religion. It is also a breach. For example, it claims historicity. This is perceived to make it superior to mere myth. Christian polemic draws the distinction between Christ - who was real - and, say, Apollo, who was just a myth. It is important in Christian identity visa vis its pagan environment. All the same, pagan themes are continued in Christianity. The resurrection is one of them. In Christianity, though, it is not a myth but an historical event. That claim to history is crucial to Christianity. So, if we determine that Christ was essentially mythical, and that what we have here is historical myth, then that presents a real problem for normative Christianity. It must.

Question: How could you have a Christianity without Jesus?

Answer: There is Jesus, and then there is Christ. The Christ. The Logos. There are the two natures of Christ. God and man. But, of course, they are utterly inseparable in any normative Christian theology. The Incarnation is a dogma of Christianity. I like to distinguish, though, between an historical Christianity – which is really only a recent thing – and a cosmic Christianity. You can distinguish between the cosmic Christ and the supposed historical man. It is the historical man that becomes problematic, because historically what you find is a mythology. It has no impact on Christ as Logos, as a metaphysical reality. And for most of history that is all that mattered to Christians. The obsession with the historical Jesus is a modern preoccupation. That fact then becomes interesting. The entire question of the historical Christ in relation to the cosmic Christ, and historical religion, becomes an acute issue.

Question: Why are you opposed to historical religion?

Answer: Historical religion is a hardening, a coarsening of the religious life. My ideas on this are based, mainly, in such writers as Mircea Eliade, and Henri Corbin. For both of them, they identify historicity as a symptom of spiritual decay. But of course some religions want to present themselves as historical. The Abrahamic religions, mainly. I tend to think that all historical religions rest upon shaky history, if you are thinking in hard-nosed secular terms. Was there a man named Moses? Was the parting of the Red Sea an historical event? Noah’s Ark? I think you need to understand those things as mythic, or not at all. Alternatively, you are left with fundamentalist literalism. Fundamentalism is historical. The fundamentalist has lost the mythic sense altogether. That represents a hardening of consciousness. And unintelligent religion.

Question: So you don’t think Moses was historical either?

Answer: Or Noah. Or Adam and Eve. Or the Buddha, for that matter. I have not studied it but I suspect that the Buddha is largely if not wholly a mythic figure. This is not such a great problem, not in Mahayana Buddhism anyway. But in Christianity the historical nature of Christ is a matter of dogma, so it is a profound problem. Buddhism could easily adjust to a non-historical Buddha. I’m inclined to adopt a general policy of doubt regarding historical claims. I don’t believe the historical claims of Moses, or even King David. Or the Buddha. Or Lao Tse either. Lao Tse is almost certainly mythical. But this does not present any real problem in Taoism. We’ve reached a certain impasse today whereby we can see that much of our history – especially the historical claims of religious figures – much of our history is fabricated, or at least mythological rather than solid fact. I think that situation extends into the roots of Christianity. You either understand it as mythic or you fail to understand it at all. I entertain some radical views on history.

Question: Such as what?

Answer: Such as, suspecting that the works of Aristotle are late Roman forgeries, and that in fact the Romans invented the figure of Aristotle. That is, admittedly, a speculative conclusion, but I put it out as a possibility. I think Aristotle is probably a Roman phony. It is one of my crank ideas.

Question: The Romans again?

Answer: Indeed. Two great Roman projects – Aristotle and Jesus. The extent to which our civilization is Roman. Roman power. I see Roman power as adamantine. A force of nature. It completely shaped the world. And history. Don’t underestimate just how fantastically literate were the Romans. And their genius was in ‘foreign’ projects – the acquisition of Greek philosophy in Aristotle and the acquisition of Jewish sanctity in Christianity. The Romans are a special case. But, in general, I think most of our religious figures – and some of our philosophical ones – are creations, fictions, myths. Most of our religious heroes, in fact.

Question: Muhammad? Is Muhammad an historical figure?

Answer: Most likely, in his case. But not necessarily. And if so, then he is a shadowy Dark Age warlord. The historical Muhammad. He is, in any case, very, very different to the Muhammad constructed in the Hadith literature and in Islamic piety. There is no historical basis for the conventional image and hagiography of the Prophet. That is all a pious fiction. So the question becomes, what do we do about that? Now that our religions stand naked in the cold light of history, what do we make of them? That is the problem. Atheism is not a legitimate answer. It is a betrayal of the human state. I do not want to offer any ammunition to atheism. But historical religion is unsustainable. As I say, this is an especially acute problem for Christianity. I am sensitive to that problem. I take no pleasure in it. But it cannot be avoided all the same. The abyss is real. You can’t skirt around it. You can only confront it.

Question: But at least, for Muslims, Muhammad is – you say – an historical figure.

Answer: Most likely so. In the case of Muhammad the weight of probabilities favors historicity. Yes. But at the same time, most of the record of early Islam is fabrication. For example, the Prophet’s mosque. All the hadith about the Prophet’s mosque. The institution of the mosque comes much later, in fact. So the Prophet’s mosque was not historical. It is mythic. In any case, what are we to do with a story like the Night Journey, on the mythical beast, the buraq? How is that to be understood? Literally? As history? Or as myth? The Islamic construction of Muhammad is mythic even if, in his case, there was likely an historical figure upon whom it was based.

Question: The Koran?

Answer: The Angel Jibreel put it in the heart of the Prophet Muhammad in a cave one night in Ramadan. Are we to believe that as history? Or as myth? If we say it is “true” – what do we mean, exactly? What mode of truth, exactly? No doubt the text of the Koran has a human history and it is at odds with its sacred history. Muslims are not ready to face that fact. The simplistic binary myth/history is inadequate in religion.

Question: Are Christians ready to do away with the historical Jesus?

Answer: No. Not at all. But there it is, all the same. When the Protestant iconoclasts set out on the quest for the historical Jesus, they have to pursue it wherever the evidence may take them. I happen to think that the evidence leads to a shocking conclusion. In the past it was not such a problem for Christians. Not in the same way as now. That is interesting in itself. It was not such an acute problem in previous eras.

Question: Why not?

Answer: Because the spiritual reality of Christ completely overwhelmed the historical facts. History was dwarfed by a metaphysical sense of Christ as Logos. The sense of (Godless) history develops with modernity. You can see it in depictions of the Crucifixion, for example. In the early icons Christ on the cross is a metaphysical deity. Only after the Renaissance, with humanism, Christ becomes an historical person on the cross, suffering as a real man. There is a shift into history. It becomes an event in history rather than an event in eternity. That is the difference. A cosmic Christ lives in eternity. He is born in eternity. He dies in eternity. He is resurrected in eternity. It is an eternal, timeless story. But as soon as you place it in time you enter historical consciousness. That is where we are today. And now we can see the threads of the history, because we have lost sight of eternity. The net result of this is that we need a much more sophisticated doctrine of the Incarnation.

Question: And yet, you say, somebody – the Romans – historicized the Christ myth in the first century. Isn’t that what you are saying?

Answer: Yes. Because the Romans had a foreshadowing of that modern historical perspective. And Christianity had to define itself contra the mythic religions of the pagans. So it takes an historical form. The Romans were busy creators of historical myths. They readily turned myths into history. They were expert at it. And, we might say, that historical consciousness was subsumed – drawn into – a sacred perspective in Christianity. There are many ways we might think about it. It is a very complex thing. What is the relation between myth and history? That is a complex question. The skeptic, the atheist, thinks that Christianity was an historical fraud. That view is based on a simplistic binary scheme whereby myth and history are opposites, like lies and truth. We need other, more sophisticated models in order to think constructively about these things. Because something is a “myth” doesn’t make it a lie. The myth is a different mode of truth. If you are insensitive to myth then you are not likely to understand much about religion. Many religions are inherently mythic.

Question: Such as what?

Answer: Types of Hinduism, say. Or the Australian aborigines. If the scholars prove, from the archeological record, that there was no Giant Rainbow Serpent or Dreamtime, the Australian aborigines are not going to go through a spiritual crisis about it. It does not depend upon history. But Christianity does. And yet, I'm afraid, our history is radically different to the official version, or the received version. So what do we do about that? Let us just suppose that the Jesus-myth position is correct. What do we do then? I'm not a Christian and so it is not my place to think it through for Christianity. But it is a problem in contemporary religion. It is a possibility that Christians ought to address. The issue always takes us back to the myth/history dynamic in religion. The problem lies with the doctrine of the Incarnation. We need a non-historical mode of thinking about it. 

Question: Is this what you taught in Biblical Studies?

Answer: No. I offered a wide range of viewpoints to students. Including ultra-conservative. The Jesus-as-myth theory was only offered as one possibility. I never used my university position as a soap-box to promote my own views. I am opposed to activist academics who do that. But the mythicist position is a legitimate one and it ought to be offered to students, especially in a secular university. 

Question: Are some Christian denominations better poised to deal with it as a possibility than others? You mentioned Catholics...

Answer: Yes. Traditional Christianity is better placed to deal with it. The Catholics. The Orhodox. Whereas the historical Christ is much more important in Protestantism. So it is a problem for Protestants - just as the issue - the Jesus quest, as they call it - arises out of Protestantism. Rather than finding the Galilean peasant carpenter that we thought we'd find, we find an early Christianity that is much more Roman, much more based in tradition and myth, theological from the outset.

* * * 

This post marks the untimely death, from cancer, of D. M. Murdock, a well-known popularizer of the Jesus Myth theory. Since the present author is known to entertain similar views on that subject, he publishes the above discussion in order to clarify his position on a controversial topic. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black